days were also men of family; but this, of course, is the less worthy of remark, as it continues in some degree to be the case at the present day. That so many landed families amongst us have descended from Edinburgh merchants is no singular fact, for trade efflorescing into nobility is an old phenomenon in the south. There we have a Duke of Leeds descended from the apprentice of Sir William Hewit the goldsmith; the Wentworth Fitzwilliams, from a worthy London merchant knighted by Henry VIII. From the nautical adventurer Phipps, of the time of Charles II., come the Earls of Mulgrave. Cornwallis is from a London merchant; Coventry, from a mercer; Radnor, from a silk-manufacturer; Warwick, from a wool-stapler; Pomfret, from a Calais merchant. Essex, Dartmouth, Craven, Tankerville, Darnley, Cowper, and Romney, have all had a similar origin. More recently ennobled families—the Dacres, the Dormers, the Dudley Wards, the Hills, the Caringtons, have in like manner taken their rise from successful trade. It is an origin surely as honourable as dexterous courtiership, gifts of church-lands, or mediæval robbery and plunder. On a retrospect of the whole subject, one must see that, notwithstanding so many of our merchants of old being gentlefolks, there is a great improvement in many respects amongst the class. Our predecessors had not merely to contend with the narrow resources of the country, and with the want of a thousand conveniences for the transport of goods by sea and land, which have since come into existence, but, worst of all, they had to struggle with the dictates of their own ignorance. Nearly all the principles which they advanced and sought to realise in legislation, as for the encouragement of trade and manufactures, were false, and could only operate for the repression of the industrial energies of the community, and, by consequence, for the keeping up of poverty in the land. It is a strange thing to say, but it is true, that breakers of laws have in a great measure been the means of bringing about a sounder policy. We have happily got above the greater part of these errors, and daily reap the natural advantages of our superior light; and yet, as a part of the British community, I think we ought to feel modest about the faults of our ancestors, since it is undeniable that the commercial world is still far from having attained the summit of perfection. It has faults, too, which are almost peculiar to our own age. The advance by banks of large sums of deposited money to reckless traders destitute of capital of their own, and who only hope for some trump to turn up in their favour before ruin overtakes them, is a mercantile error which our ancestors never dreamed of. So, also, those consequent disastrous crises of trade, of which we have just seen an example sweep over the industrial world, were unknown to our forefathers. The present Company may, however, be gratified in reflecting that from these errors the old banking